2 French revolutionary salons
Politics and gender in the first years of the French Revolution, 1789-1793
Thesis Research Master Political Culture and National Identities Institute of History, Faculty of Humanities
Leiden University
Supervisor: Prof. dr. H. te Velde
Jacomine Hendrikse Student number: S1920197 Address: Eerste Atjehstraat 107-3 1094KG Amsterdam
The Netherlands
3 Abstract
Salons were a widespread phenomenon in late eighteenth-century Paris, but their political role during the first years of the French Revolution has been overlooked. As centres of news and information, places for education in political culture and political sociability, and public opinion shapers, salons were of vital importance for professional politicians and revolutionaries. The salonnière or hostess formed the centre of the informal conversation held between a select company of elite people, invited at her home and on her initiative. In this way she could wield power and have an informal political ‘career’. The flexible character of a salon, which is a concept changing according to its context rather than a fixed institution, makes it hard to give a definition. The case study of the political meetings at the home of Madame Roland questions the way in which salons have been regarded so far, for their place functioned as a headquarters of the Girondin political movement, a propaganda institution and a political salon in which she initially played little to no role. In the radicalising political environment leading towards the Terror, Jacobin revolutionaries who often were former visitors of the salons themselves increasingly regarded the salons with suspicion, rejecting its non-transparency, aristocratic character and female activities. By the end of 1793, both the revolutionary politicians and public opinion had turned against the salons and the elitist salon society, which disappeared from Paris.
4 Acknowledgements
I wish to thank prof. dr. Henk te Velde, my thesis supervisor at Leiden University, for his input, time, and enthusiasm, which encouraged me to dive into the world of salons. I am grateful to Annelotte Janse, my friend and fellow history student, for her presence during the process of writing this thesis, our valuable discussions, and her feedback on my work. I thank Annabella Grant, my former classmate at King’s College London, for peer reviewing my text in its final stage. Last but not least, I am indebted to Daniël Hendrikse for proofreading part of my work, and to Max Graven for his help with the design of the graphics and for his moral support at all times.
5 Table of Contents
Note on the text 6
Introduction 7
- The salon as a concept 9
- ‘Les femmes ont les pouvoirs, les hommes ont le pouvoir’ 12
- Historiography 15
- Methodology 18
- Sources 20
Chapter 1. Change and continuity: the outbreak of the French Revolution 23 - The functioning of salons on the eve of the Revolution 25
- Politicisation of salons 30
- Salons: a home to political movements? 36
- September 1792: a turning point 39
Chapter 2. Politics and salons after the start of the Revolution 43
- Levels of political involvement 43
- Madame de Staël 47
- Philosophy and politics 54
Chapter 3. The final salons in radicalising Paris 57
- Madame Roland 57
- Revising the definition of a salon 61
- A bureau d’esprit public 67
- ‘Just a woman’ 70
- Remnants of salon culture 73
Conclusion 76
Appendices 81
- Appendix 1a. Names and detailed information of active salonnières in Paris 82 during the first years of the French Revolution, 1789-1793
- Appendix 1b. List of names of women active in the salons in Paris during 90 the first years of the French Revolution, 1789-1793
- Appendix 2. Locations of salons in Paris during the first years of the French 92 Revolution, 1789-1793 (corresponding to appendix 1a)
Bibliography 93
- Primary sources 93
- Secondary sources 98
6 Note on the text
In order to provide optimum legibility of my text, I have translated most of the French quotes from French to English. When I found the choice of words and the phrasing in the French original untranslatable or necessary for the understanding of my point, I have quoted it and added the English translation in the footnote. Some of the French concepts, like Ancien Régime and Assemblée Nationale, speak for themselves and I have not translated these to English.
Obviously, the spelling in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century sources I have used differs from present-day French, but, again in order to improve legibility, I have left out the addition of [sic] to the quotes as much as possible. Concerning the names of the many aristocratic people who play a role in this research, I have left their noble titles untranslated, because these titles have become part of their names. Various Anglophone authors do the same in their works, making it easier to look up further information on these persons in literature in different languages.
7 Introduction
On 8 November 1793, a lady named Madame Jeanne-Marie Roland was executed at the guillotine on the Place de la Révolution in Paris.1 Thousands of French men and women of the upper class and of noble descent suffered the same fate in the period of the French Revolution that came to be known as the Terror; yet, the death of Madame Roland marked the end of an era. She was the last remarkable
salonnière of Paris, as all other salon holders had either fled Paris or had found their death at the
massacres of September 1792. With Madame Roland’s decapitation the salon culture of Paris that had flourished and declined in the course of the Revolution came to a final standstill. It would not be rejuvenated until after the Terror and under Napoleon’s reign.
French salons first appeared in Paris in the early seventeenth century and were based on an Italian example that changed little over the following centuries.2 In the private and intimate setting of a
maison or hôtel particulier of the Parisian aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the lady of the house invited
writers, artists, scientists, politicians, journalists and other intellectuals for discourse on culture and politics. Ceremony and parade were absent in the salon, and the visitors were not required to appear in formal dressing, making visiting a salon a rather low-key activity for the upper classes. The influence of salons reached much further than the walls of the salonnière’s residence. Salon culture reached its peak in the eighteenth century, the salon fitting the Enlightenment ideas perfectly by providing a place where new discoveries, theories and ideas could be exchanged. Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau as Enlightened philosophers were frequent visitors of Parisian salons. The French capital formed the cultural and political centre of the country, where the salons were concentrated on the Right Bank of the Seine around the rue St. Honoré and on the Left Bank around the rue du Faubourg St. Germain.3 Interestingly enough, despite the focus in the Ancien Régime society on hierarchy and nobility, being of noble descent was not a requirement to participate in the Parisian salon culture at the end of the eighteenth century. In the salons, a rather diverse public of nobles and non-nobles was brought together as conversation partners on the basis of equality.4 The salon nevertheless remained an elite gathering, kept exclusive by the necessary invitation of a salon holder or prominent visitor. Visiting a salon required a delicate cultural and political know-how which only a small group within society, usually high society, possessed. This group came to be known as le monde.5
In the Enlightenment salons, the social and political sphere coincided. The criticism on society that developed in salons from the seventeenth century onwards was first of a literary order and then of
1 The Place de la Révolution is currently known as the Place de la Concorde.
2 Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters. A cultural history of the French Enlightenment (New York, 1994), 111. 3 See appendix 2.
4 Dena Goodman, ‘Enlightenment Salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 22 (3) (1989), 329-350, 331.
5 Antoine Lilti, Le monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2005), 95. Le monde or ‘the world’ was a common term used by the upper class. One was not part of le monde by birth, but one entered le monde at a certain age when one started visiting salons, balls and other high society events.
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a political order, as Jürgen Habermas points out in his theoretical work on the bourgeois public sphere.6 Literature was a relatively safe topic in the absolutist political culture of the Ancien Régime and accessible to women, in which politics could nevertheless be strongly involved. Robert Darnton notes that by 1788 literature had become politicised and Rousseau in his Lettre à d’Alembert argued that literature was essentially a political institution.7 Whether politics became a more prominent topic in Parisian salons in the build-up to the French Revolution is a point of discussion in the existing historiography of salons. Two of the most prominent contemporary authors, Antoine Lilti and Steven Kale, strongly disagree on this point. The former claims that politics did not play a significantly larger role in Parisian salons shortly before and during the French Revolution than under the Ancien Régime, while according to the latter a process of politicisation took place in the salons in the years leading up to 1789, when with the outbreak of the Revolution and the emergency of a parliamentary government salons acquired a political vocation and even became political institutions.8 According to Olivier Blanc, many Parisian salons continued to exist and they were more present and active than ever in the midst of the Revolution.9
Without a doubt, the Revolution caused a change in French society that could not remain unnoticed in the salons. The salon culture proved to be strong and flexible, with women continuing to organise weekly gatherings in the early years of the Revolution. In the words of Madame Germaine baronne de Staël: ‘[W]e can truthfully say that never has this salon culture been that brilliant and serious altogether as in the first three or four years of the Revolution.’10 The political role of the salons and the salonnières, from the start of the Revolution until their disappearance in 1793, will be central in this research. This introduction is dedicated to the study of the problematic term ‘salon’ and its definition according to different authors as well as to myself. In the first chapter, the salons will be studied in the political and cultural context of the final years of the Ancien Régime and the beginning of the Revolution. The second and third chapter consist of close studies of prominent salons under the Revolution: how did these function? And what was the role of politics and gender in these revolutionary salons?
6 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Massachusetts, 1989), 56.
7 Robert Darnton, ‘The Facts of Literary Life in Eighteenth-Century France’ in: Keith Michael Baker (ed.), The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture. The Political Culture of the Old Regime. 4 vols. (Oxford, 1987), i. 261-291, 279, 287.
8 Steven Kale, French salons. High society and political sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Baltimore, 2004), 2, 3, 43.
9 Olivier Blanc, ‘Cercles politiques et salons du début de la Révolution (1789-1793)’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française 344 (2) (2006), 63-92, 64.
10 Jacques Godechot (ed.), Considérations sur la Révolution française (Paris, 1983), 228. ‘(…) mais on peut dire avec vérité, que jamais cette société n’a été aussi brillante et aussi sérieuse tout ensemble, que pendant les trois ou quatre premières années de la revolution, à compter de 1788 jusqu’à la fin de 1791’. Madame de Staël refers to the period between 1788 and 1791, because she was active herself only until the summer of 1792, when she fled to Coppet, Switzerland.
9 The salon as a concept
What exactly a salon was, is a question that is not easy to answer. The French word salon derives from the Italian salone and sala, which was a central hall in late medieval residencies with multiple purposes. It was a space in which guests were received, dinner was served, most part of the day was spent, music was made and one could dance.11 In late eighteenth-century sources the French term salon had gained a slightly more modern meaning as a living room or reception room. For example, Madame Lucy marquise de La Tour du Pin used salon in such a way: ‘[O]n the day of our wedding, we gathered in the salon at noon’.12 Only from the early nineteenth century onwards, salon came to refer to a cultural instead of a spatial concept. It was a meeting and conversation of intellectuals, taking place at a private dining or living room.13 The salons in Paris should not be confused with the Salon de Paris with a capital ‘S’ that was established in the eighteenth century as well, which was an art exhibition in Paris that would become world-famous and was organised on a yearly basis. Its name is an abbreviation of the Salon
carré at the Louvre.
In the first years of the French Revolution, the word cercle was more widespread than salon; at first referring to the court, from 1787 onwards it was used in relation to private gatherings.14 Another common expression was société, meaning an organised group that regularly came together for a common activity or with common interests.15 Like le monde, société implies to refer to society as a whole, but was actually often used in the sense of the aristocracy or high society. An alternative term, mostly used in revolutionary accusations of salon holders, was bureau d’esprit (public). Inspired on the expression
bel esprit, it referred to the freedom of spirit that was dominant in salons and which the revolutionaries
considered the threat of public opinion that was partly shaped in salons.
Modern-day historians without exception understand a salon in the sense of an intellectual gathering. They consider the term a common expression and rarely give a definition, even though close study of their works makes clear that they all mean different things by it. Jacqueline Hellegouarc’h describes a salon as a circle with charm which stimulated the spirit and whose quality depended on the host, who could be someone from the middle classes to the high aristocracy.16 Lilti in his work
11 Larousse Dictionnaire de français: http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/salon/70719?q=salon#69952 (15 May 2018).
12 In all the 1783 editions of the fourth part of Tableau de Paris by Louis-Sébastien Mercier in the chapter called ‘Comédie clandestine’ the word ‘sallons’ can be found, referring to a salle (reception room). In the Trésor de la langue française the first occurrence of salon is in 1793. Hellegouarc’h, Jacqueline, L’esprit de société. Cercles et ‘’salons’’’parisiens au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 2000), 451; Lucy marquise de La Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans, 1778-1815 (Paris, 1913), 105.
13 See for example: Laure Junot duchesse d’ Abrantès, Histoire des salons de Paris. Tableaux et portraits du grand monde, sous Louis XVI, le Directoire, le Consulat et l’Empire, la Restauration et le règne de Louis-Pilippe Ier. 6 vols. (Paris, 1837-1838), ii.
14 Hellegouarc’h, L’Esprit de société, 451-452. 15 Larousse Dictionnaire de français
http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/soci%c3%a9t%c3%a9/73150?q=soci%c3%a9t%c3%a9#72319 (16 May 2018).
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sometimes distinguishes aristocratic from bourgeois salons, and at other times differentiates salons with
gens des lettres visitors and salons with all kinds of visitors. For Marisa Linton, a salon was a locus
often presided over by a woman, whose primary function was to serve as a conduit for the promotion of aristocratic interests through patronage, sociability, and politesse.17 Kale includes salons at the French court at Versailles in his study, whereas these gatherings differed from the worldly Parisian salons because of their exclusively aristocratic and extremely secluded nature.
The evolution of the salon in France from the seventeenth century until the years of the French Revolution, and even far into the nineteenth century, proves that the ‘salon’ is a versatile concept rather than a static historical phenomenon. The majority of authors agree that salons disappeared after 1793, and returned under Napoleon. In the Monarchie de Juillet (1830-1848), the Parisian salon culture flourished anew, but would come to a final end afterwards. At least, this is believed by among others Kale, who argues that during the Monarchie de Juillet the public sphere became relatively free, introducing specialised institutions of sociability which replaced the salons, and left the salons as places of trivial leisure.18Thus, despite the absence of the use of the term ‘salon’ in the period that this research focuses on and in the primary sources of the late eighteenth century, I have nevertheless decided to adopt this common terminology. The concept of a ‘salon’ is an anachronistic, historical framework aimed to offer a basic structure to the wide variety of social, cultural and political meetings. Throughout this research, the question of what a salon was will be repeated in relation to different case studies and circumstances. In my view, the salon is a rather flexible concept with various characteristics, which varied depending on the social, cultural and political context. Unchanging factors are the salonnière, the semi-public and semi-private character, the regularity of the gatherings, the required political and cultural know-how of the visitors, and the high level of conversation. My definition of a salon in this research is thus: an informal conversation between a select company of elite people, invited on the basis of individuality to the home of a salonnière.
Salons differed remarkably from cafés, coffee houses, societies, académies and clubs because of the high standard of conversation that was maintained among the exclusive group of visitors, which had to have a sufficient level of sociability and mundanity in the eyes of the salon holder. Places for conversation were multiple in the late eighteenth century. Coffee houses arose after English example, and among the many clubs that emerged were some with hundreds or even a thousand members.
Sociabilité and mondanité indeed had become central at the salons at the eighteenth century, best
expressed in the polite conversations. Already in their own time, salons were seen as places where the most elevated level of conversation was practiced, which was ‘the biggest charm of the French société’ on a whole, according to Madame Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, herself a salonnière.19
17 Marisa Linton, Choosing Terror. Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution (Oxford, 2013), 30.
18 Kale, French salons, 199.
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Visiting salons was a requirement to hold a respectable position in Parisian upper class society, for men as well as, though to a lesser extent, for women. Salons absorbed a considerable amount of time of their visitors, who by visiting them showed that they had enough leisure time. But visiting salons was no vain pastime: as much as the world of salons was about to see and to be seen, it was of vital importance for acquiring information and networking as well. For Gouverneur Morris, who moved to France for business in 1789 and was the American Minister to France from 1792 to 1794, visiting salons was the most important part of his work: here he met diplomats, politicians, and important men and women. Dena Goodman confirms: ‘Pleasant as salon gatherings certainly were, they were not mere leisure activities created to while away the hours or as relaxation from serious work or business’.20 Salons were not meant to sit and listen, but spaces that challenged their visitors to participate in the intellectual conversations: ‘it was not only a game’, Hellegourac’h emphasises.21 Salons were the defining social institution of the Republic of Letters: an intellectual network of communicating European intellectuals of which Paris was the unofficial capital. Urban nobility in Paris set the standard for the rest of Europe as even after leaving Paris, many diplomats still kept in touch with their Parisian salon acquaintances, the gens des lettres. People in le monde were even discouraged to go abroad for a longer period, because they would no longer know anyone in high society anymore when they returned.22 For writers and artists, success in le monde was of great significance for their social recognition and career.
When modern politics was born in the French Revolution with the summoning of the États
Généraux and the founding of the Assemblée Nationale, political sociability was structured at the salons.
Here the first professional politicians could speak freely without the fear of being overheard, they could form their political ideas and organise themselves in factions. ‘Political’ in this research comprises the formal political institution of the Assemblée Nationale and the people holding formal political positions, as well as those with informal political careers who found themselves in proximity to power and functioned as advisors or influencers of political decision or the political culture. Salons were public to the extent that their existence was no secret and that they were open to most of the French upper class. Simultaneously, their private character was shown in their exclusiveness and lack of transparency. It is not surprising that outsiders of salon society considered these practices, particularly the active role of salonnières and female visitors, mysterious and threatening. The Ancien Régime police feared for spies among the foreigners in salons. This was especially true for revolutionaries who held a republican political view and were therefore extremely cognisant of transparency and visibility in politics. They
20 Goodman, ‘Enlightenment Salons’, 337-338.
21 Beatrix Cary Davenport (ed.), A diary of the French Revolution by Gouverneur Morris. 1789-1793, 2 vols. (London, 1939); Hellegouarc’h, L’Esprit de société, 423.
22 Lilti, Le monde, 127-128. This point is illustrated by a letter of Morris to marquis de La Luzerne in London in March 1789: ‘In being absent therefore from your Friends during a few Months you avoid the Risque of being sperated for Years, if not from your Friends, at least from Persons to whom you wish well & who wish well to you. Stay where you are a little while & when you come back you will hardly know your own country’.
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often regarded salons with suspicion, and associated them with back-room politics and lobbying practices.
‘Les femmes ont les pouvoirs, les hommes ont le pouvoir’
Without women, salons could not exist. Women initiated salons, hosted the gatherings, and decided who was invited. As the host, the salonnière was most defining for the character and the quality of the salon. Salonnières were incredibly active in le monde, not only by inviting guests but also by frequently visiting salons of befriended ‘colleagues’. Of the upper classes, every self-respecting woman set up a salon, claims Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch.23 For women who did not (yet) have a salon themselves, it was not uncommon to visit salons of friends and family members, or to be taken to salons by others, such as parents who were engaged in the salon culture. Madame Stéphanie comtesse de Genlis, for example, recalled in her memoirs the period shortly after she got married but before she started to host a salon herself, when she visited the salon of the Madame duchesse de Civrac. The next winter she spent in Paris, where she dined weekly at Madame de Montesson, who happened to be her aunt, Madame duchesse de Mazarin, Madame de Gourgue, Madame marquise de Livri, Madame duchesse de Chalnes, Madame comtesse de la Massais and Madame la Reynière.24 It was not unusual to visit multiple salons in a day, and the salonnières took into consideration the days and times they received guests when planning their own salon nights, so as not to overlap other salons that were frequented by the same visitors.
Salons also functioned as a means of furthering education. Young people learned how to hold a proper conversation, what were good manners and taste, and they were educated in culture and politics. For women, salons offered an addition to the optional tutors a girl would have had at home in the best case or to the lack of proper education in the worst. They provided the only opportunity for women to be among men, and even encouraged women to socialise with men and be challenged intellectually. According to Goodman, ‘the initial and primary purpose behind salons was to satisfy the self-determined educational needs of the women who started them’.25 To what extent a salonnière engaged with the visitors of the salon, participated in the discussions and influenced the course of events outside the salon has remained understudied and a point of discussion among historians so far. The role of women in salons often went much further than organisation and entertainment. Hosting a salon differed from hosting an occasional dinner because salonnières received guests at set times, often several meetings per week. Salons usually took place at night, but during the day as well. Morris often had lunch (in French:
23 Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch, Salons européens. Les beaux moments d’une culture féminine disparue (Paris, 1993), 16. ‘(…) toute dame qui se respectait fondait un salon’.
24 Stéphanie-Félicité du Crest comtesse de Genlis, Les Dîners du baron d’Holbach dans lequels se trouvent rassemblés, sous leurs noms, une partie des gens de la cour et des littérateurs les plus remarquables du 18e siècle (Paris, 1822), 245, 275.
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diner) with other guests at one of his female high society friends or acquaintances, and visited multiple
others at night or for a late dinner (souper). Drinking was part of salon culture as well. In August 1792, Morris was at Madame de Staël’s where the visiting men desired to drink after lunch, and Morris sent for wine and ‘let them get preciously drunk’. The rest of the afternoon, he continued to visit two of his other female friends as usual.26 Madame Vigée-Lebrun noted in her memoirs that she considered the hours of the day too precious to be spent in society, and stated that she only went out at night.27 Salons were thus quite time-consuming, both for the salon holder who hosted them and for the visitor who moved from salon to salon to hear the news, and to see and be seen.Also required was a certain level of financial independence, especially for women who paid for the drinks and food which was sometimes provided at the salon. Complaints about the high costs of a salon can be found in writings, just like remarks about the restriction of mobility some salonnières experienced. Salonnières were rather confined to their homes because they received guests most nights of the week.28 Salons thus had grown into a regular and serious business at the end of the eighteenth century.
While a woman was independent in her role as salonnière, her status could not be seen fully separately of her husband’s or lover’s, who often was the most prominent visitor of her salon. The difference between male and female power in pre-revolutionary France is beautifully expressed in French: ‘les femmes ont des pouvoirs, les hommes ont le pouvoir’. However subtle the linguistic difference, powers and power are two completely different things.29 It implies that male power is in the public domain, while women pull strings behind the scenes, in a private setting. This fixed, over-simplified way of thinking does not apply to the salonnières at the end of the eighteenth century. Salons formed a particular sphere, in between public and private. Throughout the eighteenth century, the salons had gained a central position in the public eye, or had even become the public sphere themselves as Habermas argues.30 The rising notion of individualism that was characteristic of the Enlightenment granted people more confidence of their individual reason, power and intellect. For the first time, the world seemed feasible; individuals could change the world. The public sphere, which before had only been inhabited by the King, could be penetrated by individuals. However, to state that the social status of a salon holder’s husband was a basis for a woman’s own activities in le monde, as Lougee does, is giving too much credit to the male role in history.31 A woman such as Madame de Staël functioned fully
26 Davenport, A Diary, ii, 489.
27 Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, de L’Académie Royale de Paris, de Rouen, de Saint-Luc de Rome et d’Arcadie, de Parme et de Bologne, de Saint-Pétersbourg, de Berlin, de Genève et Avignon (Paris, 1835), 41.
28 Lilti, Le monde, 93. In 1786, Queen Marie-Antoinette asked Necker worriedly about the expenses of Madame de Staël at her salon. Certainly not at every salon guests were offered a meal, as some salon nights finished before dinnertime and others only started afterwards. For Madame Julie de Lespinasse providing her guests meals was out of the question because of financial reasons.
29 Michelle Perrot, ‘Women, Power, and History: the case of nineteenth-century France’ in: Siân Reynolds, Women, State and Revolution. Essays on power and gender in Europe since 1789 (Brighton, 1986), 44-59, 44-45. 30 Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 31.
31 Carolyn Lougee, Le paradis des femmes. Women, salons, and social stratification in seventeenth-century France (Princeton, 1976), 168.
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independently of her husband, who was barely present at the nights at her salon. Instead, her successive lovers were among the most prominent guests. For many other women, like Madame Sophie de Condorcet and Madame Anne-Cathérine Helvétius, the peak years of their salons were after their husbands had passed away.
A salon was virtually the only opportunity for intelligent upper class women to have a sort of political profession. For a long time in history, the only political role women could play was giving advice to men active in politics, and this is exactly the case in salons. Even though some women, like Madame de Staël and Madame Roland, did publish on politics and political theory in the first years of the Revolution, they mostly did so anonymously. Many of the salon holders had a direct connection to politics as they were married to a politician or had a close relationship with someone involved in politics, which gave them an indirect introduction to politics. Others functioned more independently, visiting the public galleries of the Assemblée Nationale and inviting politicians they had met and friends of friends. Most of the salon hostesses, especially in the politically turbulent first years of the Revolution, were strongly aware of and even involved in politics. According to Blanc, the decision makers who visited the salons were certainly inspired and influenced by the women whose circles they visited.32
Though salonnières were central at the gatherings at their homes, outside of the salons their role was significantly smaller. Under the Revolution, women were not granted citizenship and they were not included in the Déclaration des Droits de L’Homme et du Citoyen written in 1789. The majority of revolutionaries, especially the Jacobins, thought that a woman’s place in society was marginal and focused on children and the home; not among men and not at all discussing politics, rather wielding ‘petticoat power’.33 Only a handful of influential men dared to oppose this emphasis on the female domestic role, one of them being Nicolas de Condorcet, who argued that women should be granted citizenship in the same terms as men, an opinion he based on classic individualistic grounds.34 Women’s involvement in politics was tolerated and even encouraged at least by the visitors of the salons. Yet, there were major differences among women in the political role they saw for themselves. Madame Roland for example, who hosted a Girondin salon and helped her husband in his work as Minister of the Interior, was convinced, at least before the Revolution was completed, that women should not officially partake or even engage in politics in their own name. Her contemporary Madame Olympe de Gouges can be called a true feminist avant la lettre, because she most explicitly advocated women’s rights, citizenship and female suffrage.35 Eventually, the Jacobins managed to significantly reduce the role of women in society. The law of 2 November 1792 prohibiting women to organise réunions and cercles
32 Blanc, ‘Cercles politiques’, 16-17.
33 Siân Reynolds, ‘Marianne’s Citizens? Women, the Republic and Universal Suffrage in France’ in: Reynolds, Women, State and Revolution, 102-122, 113.
34 Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat marquis de Condorcet, ‘Art social. Sur l’admission des femmes au droit de cité’, Journal de la Société de 1789 5 (1790), 1-13.
35 Susan Dalton, ‘Gender and the shifting ground of revolutionary politics: the case of Madame Roland’, Canadian journal of history 36 (2) (2001), 259-282, 280; Olympe de Gouges, Les droits de la femme. À la Reine (n.p., 1789-1793).
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and the Law of Suspects of 17 September 1793 which reduced individual liberty, meant the final end of Parisian salon life.
Historiography
In the nineteenth century, salons modelled after Parisian eighteenth-century example became a widespread phenomenon all over Western Europe. The Romantics regarded the French salon culture of the previous century with nostalgia, focusing on its literary and cultural aspects. During the Restauration (1814-1830), the first historical writings on salons appeared, often written by female authors who had still experienced the late eighteenth-century salon culture themselves. Madame Laure Junot duchesse d’Abrantès, who was born in 1784 and started her own salon after her marriage in 1800, published a history of Parisian salons, including memories of salonnières under the Revolution whom she had known herself.36 In 1857, Madame Virginie Ancelot’s work appeared, significantly titled Les salons de Paris.
Foyers éteints.37 The biggest boom of early nineteenth-century literature on salons was caused by the massive publications of memoirs, letters and diaries of eighteenth-centuries salonnières by their children and grandchildren. If these primary sources about their relatives lacked, they put their lives in writing themselves, like Vie de la princesse de Poix, née Beauveau by her granddaughter Madame Léontine vicomtesse de Noailles.38 The Parisian publishing house Charpentier even produced a whole series of memoirs and correspondences of French salon society in the second half of the nineteenth century.39 The memory of salons stretched further than literary publications: in 1812, the first version of A reading
of Voltaire’s tragedy ‘L’orpheline de la Chine’ in the salon of Madame Geoffrin was painted by
Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier. Empress Josephine commissioned the painting and the work was exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1814. Replicas of the painting appeared and books on salons depicted it on the cover, for it is one of the rare visual impressions of what happened behind the closed doors of eighteenth-century salons. From then on, the salon of Madame Marie Thérèse Geoffrin came to be seen as the typical eighteenth-century salon and functioned as a frame of reference for salons in the next century.40
In the later decades of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, considerably less literature on salons was written, which matched the decreasing importance of the salons in society. Most authors agree that salons finally disappeared in this time and that they have ceased to exist entirely, while Von der Heyden-Rynsch considers spaces of cultural liberty, of freedom
36 Abrantès, Histoire des salons, ii.
37 Virginie Ancelot, Les salons de Paris. Foyers éteints (Paris, 1857). ‘The salons of Paris. Extinguished centres’. 38 Léontine vicomtesse de Noailles, Vie de la princesse de Poix, née Beauveau (Paris, 1855).
39 Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs, i. title page. The series are called Mémoires et correspondances sur l’histoire et la société françaises’.
40 Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier, A reading of Voltaire’s tragedy ‘L’orpheline de la Chine’ in the salon of Madame Geoffrin (1822). Musée National du Château de Malmaison, Malmaison; Sotheby’s Auctions E-catalogue http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/old-master-paintings-n08952/lot.93.html (29 June 2018). Visual representations of salons during the French Revolution do not exist.
16
of spirit and of changing conscience as modern-day salons. She thus argues salons still exist, although in a completely different form.41 With the end of the Romantic period in Europe, nostalgia on the salons faded. In 1949, Marguerite Glotz and Madeleine Maire started their monograph on eighteenth-century salons with the question: ‘Is it not vain to try to recall the life of high society in the eighteenth century?’ They did not doubt the most animated conversations had been held at salons, comparing these with fireworks which were now extinct.42 Like most works on salons in the eighteenth century, Glotz and Maire focus on literary salons under the Ancien Régime. Madame de Staël, who fled Paris in September 1792, is briefly mentioned and called one of the last salonnières of Paris. It seems that many authors are reluctant to study the complicated developments after 1789, like Hellegouarc’h, whose book title promises it concerns the cercles and salons parisiens in the eighteenth century, but who in her conclusion writes that this is narrowed down to the period between 1720 and 1789.43 Others refer briefly to the upheavals of the French Revolution, causing the closure of salons and the flight or assassination of salonnières, but do not study the revolutionary years in detail either. In the older literature, the general idea that salons did not survive the outbreak of the Revolution and did not exist after 1789 is dominant. With the increasing attention for gender issues in the last decades of the twentieth and in the beginning of the twenty-first century, women came to play a more prominent role in the works on the salons. See for example the subtitle of Von der Heyden-Rynsch’s Salons européens. Les beaux moments
d’une culture feminine disparue, Elizabeth Susan Wahl’s Invisible relations. Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of the Enlightenment and various articles in Sara Melzer’s and Leslie Rabine’s
collection of essays called Rebel Daughters. Women and the French Revolution and in Siân Reynolds’ edited work Women, State and Revolution. Essays on power and gender in Europe since 1789.44 Recently, Karen Green has published scholarship on female political thought and put effort into promoting research on sources written by women instead of men, when studying women. This research has made use of her book A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe and her contributions to
Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women. Virtue and Citizenship and Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800.45 Joan Landes, a feminist herself, has highlighted the role of gender in the (political) public sphere during the French Revolution.46
41 Heyden-Rynsch, Salons européens, 10.
42 Marguerite Glotz and Madeleine Maire, Salons du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1949), 1. ‘N’est-il pas vain de chercher à évoquer la vie de société au XVIIIe siècle?’.
43 Hellegouarc’h, L’Esprit de société, 423.
44 Heyden-Rynsch, Salons européens; Elizabeth Susan Wahl, Invisible Relations. Representations of Female Intimacy in the Age of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1999); Sara Melzer and Leslie Rabine (eds.), Rebel daughters. Women and the French Revolution (New York, 1992); Reynolds, Women, State and Revolution.
45 Karen Green, A History of Women’s Political Though in Europe, 1700-1800 (Cambridge, 2014); Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, Paul Gibbard and Karen Green (eds.), Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women. Virtue and Citizenship (New York, 2016); Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green (eds.), Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800 (Dordrecht, 2007).
46 Joan Landes (ed.), Feminism, the Public and the Private (Oxford, 1998); Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 1988).
17
All authors of the mentioned works are female, just as most biographers of salonnières are. Despite proving that women did play significant political roles in the late eighteenth-century salons, many authors of recently published biographies on salon holders automatically pay close attention to female topics such as love, affairs, marriage and motherhood. Reynolds’ double biography on the Roland couple
Marriage and Revolution: Monsieur and Madame Roland for example thoroughly examines the affairs
the couple had, the love letters they wrote and the ups and downs of their marriage.47 Of the many biographies on Madame de Staël only a minor part is dedicated to her political thoughts and Parisian life, in contrast to more detailed accounts on her adventurous voyage through Europe to flee Napoleon and her later affair with Benjamin Constant. An exception to this phenomenon is the work of Goodman, who believes men and women in salons to be equal and who discusses the political and philosophical views of the ‘Women of Letters’.48
A detailed study focusing only on the revolutionary salons in Paris and their role in the French Revolution does not exist, even though in modern literature it is commonly agreed that salons continued to exist in the years after 1789. Research on the role of women in the French Revolution in general does not focus on salon holders and upper class women, but on lower class women such as those who undertook the march from Paris to Versailles in October 1789. Studies on women’s political involvement are understood via men’s views, for they developed political theories and held political functions.49 Kale’s French Salons. High society and political sociability from the Old Regime to the
Revolution of 1848, published in 2004, comes closest to this research, in the sense that he focuses on the
political history of the salons and the role of salons in French politics. Yet, his book covers a long period, from the early eighteenth century until the Revolution of 1848, and dedicates only one chapter to the salons of the French Revolution.50 Nevertheless, French salons has become a standard work, together with Lilti’s Le monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle which appeared the following year.51 Rather than offering a sequence of case studies of salons, like d’Hellegouarc’h and Glotz and Maire do, they name dozens of salonnières in a rather messy overview covering a long historical period.52 Drawing comparisons between different times, Lilti and Kale make it hard for the reader to keep track, even though they should be credited for offering an insight in the rather extensive scale of salons.
47 Siân Reynolds, Marriage and Revolution: Monsieur and Madame Roland (Oxford, 2012). 48 Goodman, The Republic of Letters; Goodman, ‘Enlightenment salons’.
49 Green, A History, 2.
50 Kale, French Salons. See chapter 2: Liberals and Émigrés (1789-1799), 46. 51 Lilti, Le monde.
18 Methodology
The aim of this research is not to study exactly what happened inside the salons between 1789 and 1793, who visited from day to day or what was said every minute. The outcome of such research would not be an answer to the question what the role of salons was, but how the salons were utilised. Instead, I take a wider perspective in researching the dialogue between salons and politics as the Revolution started and proceeded. In the early years of French professional politics, the Assemblée Nationale was in continuous interaction with society. The role of salons in the first years of the Revolution was two-fold: salons actively influenced society, politics and public opinion, while at the same time society, politics and public opinion did influence the salons. This active role of the salon could roughly be divided in three different levels.
First of all, salons shaped the opinion of those who held power. Salons were frequently visited by people involved in politics, both under the Ancien Régime and increasingly under the Revolution, when salon visits were scheduled after the meetings of the Assemblée had ended and before the opening of the Parisian clubs at night. As mentioned before, the salons were of vital importance for the political sociability of men with political ambitions. As the founding of the États Généraux and the Assemblée Nationale marked the birth of professional politics in France, many of the politicians of the first years of the Revolution had come to Paris for their careers without their families, which enabled them to spend all their time on their new professions. The rather intimate gatherings at salons and the required invitation made that the members of the Assemblée did not visit as a group, but rather on an individual basis or with a small group. At the salons, they created factions with colleagues who held similar political ideas, or discussed with opponents while the salonnière made sure the conversation remained polite and did not get out of control. Instead of the focus on oratorical talent expressed in formal speeches at the Assemblée and the clubs, the salons were about ideas which could be invented and developed in low-key discussions and conversations. On this level, the most refined lobbying and back-room politics took place, practices in which women did play major roles too, as will be argued in this research.
In the second place, salons were important for members of the upper class who held high functions in French society: politicians, publishers and business men. Among them were the men of letters: the philosophers, writers and scientists. At the salons, these notables mixed with and participated in the debates on an equal level with the politicians and in some cases became politicians themselves as the Revolution proceeded, like journalist Jacques Pierre Brissot who became active in municipal politics in 1789 and in national politics in 1791. The salons were a means to extend their networks, which were shaped by their professional backgrounds, and to acquire information.
In the third place, the salons’ influence was on the people in a broader sense who had no entry into le monde. To them, the salons were closed off institutions which they often did not fully understand and only became aware of in indirect, non-transparent ways: by rumours circulating in the streets. This made the lower classes suspicious of what happened behind the closed doors of fancy hôtels particuliers.
19
While under the Ancien Régime the court had not paid any attention to the general will of the people, this had changed significantly when Jacques Necker in his function of directeur général des finances had published the Compte Rendu au Roi in 1781, making the finances of the state public to the nation. The fury this publication evoked, made that public opinion for the first time was seen as a powerful force.
The role of the salons concerned all three levels. The other way around, politicians, notables and public opinion influenced the salons as well. While politicians depended on the salons for the successful start of their careers, once they were established they could turn the salonnières and salons down. While laws were developed and created in the salons, the salons eventually fell under these laws themselves. And while the upper class in salons influenced the general will by making policy and deciding what would be published, the people’s opinion could lead its own life and the masses could turn against the few in the salons. Politics in this research will be understood as everything and everyone involved in proximity to power: from formal policymaking and the people in political positions, informal political advising and lobbying to influencing political modes of behaviour. Instead of politics at the Assemblée Nationale, the whole of French political culture is concerned. In this research, I will study the political role of salons and salonnières in these three levels of influence with the help of various case studies of salons.
Gender plays a leading role in this work. I will not define the role of women by their husbands or their family relations, but by their own actions instead. The salonnière, who undoubtedly is a decisive factor in this history, is the starting point of my research. Nevertheless, because this work is a political history, the role of men as holders of formal official power, is significant. The way in which men regarded women, as salonnières and more generally as the other sex in society, underwent important changes over the course of the years with which this research is concerned.
In every existing work on the Parisian salons in the late eighteenth century different names of the most prominent salonnières appear. In order to provide the reader with a clear and an as complete as possible overview of the active salonnières in the period between 1789 and 1793, I have composed a database. This quantitative research complements this project’s qualitative research. It consists of a Detailed overview of active salonnières in the early years of the French Revolution (appendix 1a) and a list of active women in high society (appendix 1b). The detailed overview contains biographical information such as the name under which salonnières hosted their salons, their maiden names and their year of birth and death. All of this will make it easier for the reader to understand who these women were, and for scholars to continue doing research on them. Furthermore, both the date in which the salonnière ceased to participate in salon activities in Paris, and the reason why she quit her salon activities are included. I have tried to broadly define the political character of their salon, choosing between either Royalist/Conservative, constitutional monarchist, revolutionary/Girondin, revolutionary/Jacobin or Liberal. Royalist/Conservative were the people who kept supporting the King, either opposing the revolution on a whole or welcoming the revolutionary reforms to a certain extent
20
while remaining loyal to the monarchy. Constitutional monarchists were in favour of the monarchy as well, but thought a constitution should be founded to limit its power. Revolutionary/Girondin refers to supporters of a moderate revolutionary unofficial political movement which was critical on the court and the clergy and which aimed to spread the Revolution internationally. The Girondins were initially part of the Jacobin movement. Revolutionary/Jacobin were the people supporting the radicalised Jacobin movement lead by Robespierre, who strongly opposed the monarchy and the clergy, wanted to have everyone executed who opposed the Revolution and to reshape French revolutionary society as a whole. If I could not find whether people who were sympathetic to the Revolution were in favour of Girondins of Jacobins, I have simply defined them as Revolutionary. Lastly, liberals used Enlightenment philosophy to defend their ideal of a democratic state.
Most surprising is the result of incorporating the current address of the salon or where it would have been nowadays and the current arrondissement of Paris where the salon was located, insofar this could be traced. This information is converted to a map as well, in order to show the hubs in Paris where most of the salons were concentrated, and their relative distance to the meeting place of the Assemblée, the Louvre where the King’s family lived temporarily and the political clubs in Paris. As is shown on the map in appendix 2, there were two centres of salon activity: one on the Right Back of the Seine, around the Louvre and the Palais Royal and one exactly on the opposite side of the river, in the former publishing district which is now called Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Concerning geography and distances, the reader should keep in mind that the eighteenth-century upper class Parisians’ means of transportation was either by carriage and horseback or, for men, by foot.53 Of the women whose names I have found in primary sources as salonnières or (prominent) figures in high society, but about whom I have not been able to trace further information in the time frame of this research I have composed a list, which is added as appendix 1b. The database and this list are work in progress and are by no means finished nor complete, but serves as a stepping stone to further research.
Sources
Thanks to the large-scale digitisation process of the documents of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France started by president François Mitterand in 1988, most of this research on Paris in the late eighteenth century could have been done from anywhere in the world. On their website Gallica.bnf.fr, over four million sources have been made freely accessible.54 Sources about the salons are scarce: rare lists of attendants exist, and no notes of conversations were made systematically. The salon holders’ letters and diaries are the most important sources in this research. To my initial surprise, the salonnières dedicated relatively little text to their salon activities in their own writings. Apparently, hosting a salon was such
53 See appendix 1a and 1b for the overview of active salonnières and appendix 2 for the map. 54 Gallica, The Bibliothèque Nationale de France digital library: http://gallica.bnf.fr
21
an ordinary activity in upper class circles, that it was not considered worthy to describe the setting and practices of a salon in great detail. This is already an interesting finding in itself. The same goes for the writings of the most prominent French salon visitors; instead, foreigners offer the most comprehensive descriptions of the world of salons, like Morris’ diaries of his period in France between 1789 and 1793 and Arthur Young’s travel memoirs between 1787 and 1791.55 Unfortunately, in the French Revolution many of these documents of the pre- and early revolutionary years have been lost or destroyed, either intentionally or accidentally. In cases in which they still exist, they are the most important primary sources I have used. Letters were a popular and common means of communication in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. One should nevertheless keep in mind that letters by strangers were borrowed, read and copied, and some correspondences were from the outset intended for publication.56 Letters were thus written with indirect or direct audience orientation.
As an alternative, I have made use of the memoirs of salonnières and salon visitors, often composed in the later years of or after the Revolution and in most cases published by their children or close friends after their deaths. In some works, these editors mention that they have made small adjustments or changes to the original text, for reasons of legibility or modernisation. In other cases, they do not, which does not mean that the reader can assume that the published text is of undisputed origin. The memoirs are usually extensive, between fourteen and twenty volumes consisting of over 300 pages each are the norm. Memoirs are written with hindsight, based on inaccurate memory. The past is as easily forgotten, reshaped or even invented, often well-meant and without even being aware of it, especially in the turbulent times of the revolutionary era with its quickly succeeding events, changing political agendas and propaganda. In hindsight, causal relations might be sought between events. This problematises the use of memoirs as a primary source. Besides possible censorship of the editor, authors might have self-censored their memoirs as well. Under influence or threat of radicalising revolutionaries, many salonnières tended to minimise their role in politics and history in their writings to save their reputations or their heads. Memoirs are usually intended to be published unlike like diaries that are written for oneself, to serve as an extra memory. Memoirs thus are by no means a fully reliable historical source, while they do provide us with the most extensive information on salons.
In the late eighteenth century, the printing industry was booming with many newspapers, journals and pamphlets appearing daily. By, for and about the people of le monde, the cultural newsletters Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique appeared between 1753 and 1790, copied outside of France to avoid French censorship.57 The many societies and clubs were responsible for a major part of all the publications, offering the opportunity to politicians to publish articles about
55 Davenport, A Diary, 2 vols.; Matilda Betham-Edwards (ed.), Arthur Young’s travels in France during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789 (London, 1892).
56 Habermas, The Structural Transformation, 49.
57 ‘Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique de Grimm et de Diderot’, The Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL): https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4 /grimm/ (15 June 2018).
22
their political viewpoints. Since the first meeting of the Assemblée Nationale, detailed notes have been drawn and published on a daily basis. In collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Stanford University has digitised these parliamentary archives which span from May 1789 until November 1794 as part of their French Revolution Digital Archive.58 Other official state sources, like documents of the Parisian police, inventories and administrational documents are used as well. Because of this research’s limited scope, it relies solely on published sources, not on manuscripts. Lastly, for biographical information and information on family ties and relations to the court the database of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Dictionary of women under the Ancien Régime and the website of the research centre of the Château de Versailles have been used.59
58 French Revolution Digital Archive: https://frda.stanford.edu/en/catalog
59 Data Bibliothèque Nationale de France: http://data.bnf.fr; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/; Dictionnaire des femmes de l’ancienne France. Société internationale pour l’étude des femmes de l’Ancien Régime (SIEFAR): http://siefar.org/dictionnaire/fr/Accueil; Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles: http://www.chateauversailles-recherche-ressources.fr.
23
Chapter 1. Change and continuity: the outbreak of the French Revolution
In 1788, a year before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Paris had a population of 600,000 inhabitants.60 It is very hard to estimate how many salons did exist in the French capital at that time; there are virtually no historians who tried to make an educated guess. More than a century before, in 1661, 251 salons in Paris were listed by Antoine Baudeau de Somaize, all of which were hosted by women, as he noted.61 It is rather likely that over a century later, this number had only grown. However, tracing the number of eighteenth-century salons is problematic because of the vague and fluid definition of a salon; it is hard to distinguish between personal visits, occasional receptions and regular salon nights. The Parisian upper class was a relatively small world, which kept close contact by writing letters and meeting regularly, both on planned visits and when crossing each other in the streets or during a ride or walk in the park. Its members paid each other frequent visits: they dined together or just held a conversation. In his diaries, Morris noted how he went to see his many male and female friends almost every day. These visits often seemed to be rather spontaneous: sometimes he found the man or woman of the house was out, at other times he found them in bed, getting dressed, or having dined already. This usually did not prevent him from staying with them, demonstrating the informal relationship he had with many high society people. In other cases, he was invited for a more formal dinner or conversation night together with friends and acquaintances of the host or hostess. Whether these nights were actual salons nights or incidental group visits, is hard to determine.
In order to define the size of Parisian high society, historians have used numbers of literacy. Because of the elite and intellectual character of the salons, in all probability all salon visitors were literate. This seems obvious, but in the eighteenth century it was not uncommon for upper class women to be educated in moral and behavioural issues instead of in writing and scientific knowledge. Madame de Genlis was taught by a private teacher together with her older brother, but when he moved to Paris for his further education, she stayed in their hometown and her schooling ended. She was then six years old and could only read, not write. Madame Adélaïde comtesse de Flahaut received diplomats in her salon with whom she spoke English, a language that she did not have written proficiency in.62 Orville Murphy estimates that the French literate elite around the outbreak of the Revolution numbered between 30,000 and 50,000 people, on a population of approximately 24,5 million French.63 It is plausible that the majority did live in the French capital. Likewise, it can be expected that most of the 20,000 copies of the Mercure de France circulated among the Parisian upper class, and that this same group was
60 Louis Messance (ed.), Nouvelles recherches sur la population de la France: avec des remarques importantes sur divers objets d'administration (Paris, 1788), 49.
61 Lougee, Le Paradis, 116.
62 Genlis, Mémoires, i. 11; Davenport, A Diary, i. 17.
63 Murphy, Orville, The Diplomatic Retreat of France and Public Opinion on the Eve of the French Revolution, 1783-1789 (Washington, 1998), 138; Messance, Nouvelles recherches, 52; Darnton, ‘The Facts’.
24
responsible for the majority of the 7,000 subscriptions to the Gazette de France.64 We can assume these were the same intellectuals who visited the salons. However, it is known that groups of intellectuals subscribed to single copies of a variety of newspapers, contributing a sum each and reading them in turn, making it hard to conclude anything on the size of the literary public that read the newspapers related to the number of subscribers.65 In addition, when someone did not receive a copy of a newspaper himself, he could go to one of the many clubs which appeared in Paris around the beginning of the Revolution, where the members were offered a variety of newspapers too.66 The same was done with books, which circulated among groups of friends. Another difficulty is that the uncensored foreign press was more popular in France than the national press, which include the Mercure and Gazette. Therefore, it is very hard to trace the actual number of readers of the French press, and to relate this number to the size of the salon public.
At large, the world of salons in Paris was so extensive that salons, cercles, bureaux d’esprit and sociétés are spoken of without further explanation in the late eighteenth century. They were common in the sense that everyone knew about their existence. Subject to popular mockery, various comedies on salon culture were performed in Parisian theatres and apparently were successful, because the texts of the plays were often published and even appeared in various editions.67 The line between regular receptions of guests and paying informal visits and a proper salon was rather thin. Together with the unclear definition of a salon, goes the indistinctiveness of a salonnière. While for upper class women themselves their entry in le monde was rather important, for outsiders it was often hard to understand if this had taken place and if so when exactly. Both primary and secondary sources present a large number of names of women who were active in le monde around the outbreak of the French Revolution. Many of these names barely appear elsewhere and information on them is hard to find, but there certainly is a great number of salonnières who appear in every work as the most remarkable and important in the late eighteenth century. An overview of these active salonnières can be found in appendix 1.
This chapter starts with the status quo of the salons in Paris just before the Revolution broke out. Already before July 1789, a process of politicisation of French society had begun, which impacted the salons. Salons increasingly became part of the political public sphere. While some salons continued to function as they had done under the Ancien Régime, containing their aristocratic and cultural character, others changed into political gatherings where even political movements were formed. With this latter part of the salons this research is concerned.
64 Jeremy Popkin, Revolutionary News. The Press in France 1789-1799 (Durham, 2012), 19. 65 Goodman, ‘Enlightenment Salons’, 347.
66 Davenport, A Diary, i. 116.
67 See for example: James Rutledge, Le bureau d’esprit. Comédie en cinq actes et en prose (London, 1777). The first edition was published in Paris in 1776, a second edition appeared a year later.
25 The functioning of salons on the eve of the Revolution
Goodman divides the long history of salons leading up to 1789 into two phases: the literary Ancien Régime salon until around 1750, and when it was replaced by the more political Enlightenment salon.68 These ‘new’ salons were oriented less on the court, and instead of religion and royalty, now reason and nature were central. Despite the fact that upper class women who hosted the salons were usually familiar with court circles and even engaged in the court society, based in Versailles until October 1789 when it moved to the Louvre in Paris, the orientation to the court of pre-revolutionary salons was fading in the years leading to the Revolution.69 L’art du cour gradually came to be replaced by l’art de la société. A new elite culture was born; critical, sociable and in relation to the wider public, Habermas argues.70 Salons functioned independently from the court, without needing its approval. Closely related to Enlightenment reasoning, the idea that the monarchy and the government could be subject to logic and rational scrutiny came into existence. The criticism, and eventually satire, ridicule, and mockery focused on Louis XVI and his entourage developed in the years before the Revolution.
Salons offered social mobility, but instead of an entry into aristocracy, late eighteenth-century salons provided an entry into intellectual high society, or the world of the Republic of letters.71 Goodman affirms that ‘the Parisian salon was the seed from which an enlightened public could develop, its character becoming progressively less elite as it grew’.72 Compared to the exclusive, non-representative and exceptionally non-transparent court at Versailles, salons were ‘egalitarian in form and democratic in aspiration’, according to Goodman.73 For Lougee, however, this statement goes to far, as she believed that while salons were ‘internally egalitarian, deliberately blurring distinctions between family backgrounds, they nonetheless comprised a social elite set off from the rest of French society at large’.74 While the salons were undoubtedly Parisian, they reached beyond the French borders by receiving foreigners and being in contact with international intellectual elites, either on a private basis or as part of international correspondence networks.75 If not all of its visitors were men and women of letters, the salon public was certainly lettered. Salons were taken seriously by the salonnières who hosted on set nights, sometimes for years in a row, and by salon visitors who came over daily or weekly. Visiting a salon was also not completely non-committal. Madame Angélique comtesse de Chastellux expressed her disapproval to a guest who went away early the previous night and came late the following, though
68 Goodman, ‘Enlightenment Salons’, 340.
69 See for example: Genlis, Mémoires, i. 3: ‘J’ai dû croire encore qu’ayant passé une grande partie de ma vie à la cour et dans le plus grand monde, je pourrais donner un tableau fidèle d’une société éteinte ou dispersée’. 70 Habermas, The Structural Transformation.
71 Goodman, Dena, ‘Enlightenment Salons’, 329-331. 72 Ibid., 350.
73 Ibid.
74 Lougee, Le Paradis, 170.
